Attempts to affix a label of inferiority to families of committed same-sex couples continue with Fulton v. Philadelphia, a pending U.S. Supreme Court effort to secure a right to discriminate for private, commercial child foster, placement and care businesses affiliated with religious institutions. In their effort to deny the LGBT community equal participation in society, these service providers seek to expand exemptions from the appropriate and Constitutionally grounded right to practice one’s religion freely into a full-blown right to discriminate throughout our greater society.

Though the dispute concerns religiously affiliated organizations who subscribe to anti-LGBT beliefs, if such a right to discriminate is authorized by the court, it will almost certainly be seized on by other businesses and commercial vendors who claim to have personal religious objections to serving same-sex couples. Fulton follows the much-discussed opinion in Masterpiece Cakeshop v Colorado, 584 U.S. ___ (2018), that actually created more questions than it answered when it utilized a technical issue to rule—without actually ruling—in favor of a Colorado bakeshop that refused to bake a gay couple’s wedding cake.